Green Room

Centrists GOP’ers Don’t Want a Big Tent

The Daily Caller reports that ’several GOP centrists are undecided about whether to donate to Sharron Angle, who told Senate Republicans on Tuesday that she represents a chance to get rid of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).’

Angle won the Republican Party’s nomination recently. She is a darling of the Tea Party, who calls for the replacement of Medicare and Social Security with “free-market alternatives.” She also ‘favors big cuts in federal spending and endorsed getting rid of the Department of Education and giving more control to state and local governments.’

Although these views are perfectly defensible – even authentically conservative – more moderate members of the GOP feel a little bit queasy about Angle. Sen. Scott Brown – yeah, that Massachusetts Republican who was only to represent his state in the U.S. Senate because the Tea Party supported him – for instance, has already said he “doesn’t plan to get involved in that race.”

It’s never ceases to amaze me that those who always call for a “Big Tent” are seldom willing to put up with people who hold slightly different beliefs. Centrists are in many respects worse than ideological progressives, conservatives and / or libertarians in that regard. They always talk about how they want to be accepted in both parties, how they too should be supported, endorsed and funded, but when a more ideological and idealistic person wins the nomination of their party, they suddenly disappear from the scene and quickly focus on “doing my job here” (as Brown put it).

With all due respect, but if these individuals can’t get themselves to support their own party’s nominee because she’s too libertarian / conservative for their tastes, they shouldn’t complain when conservative activists actively work to oust them in their from office. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Simple.

Blowback

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The moderates see the “Big Tent” GOP more like a big bus, with them in the driver’s seat and the Tea Party people in the back, preferably sitting over the engine and next to the rest room. Just give us your votes every 2-4 years and then go away is what they want, because they have a mindset that similar to liberal Democrats in their elitism — they think all conservatives can do when they open their mouths is say stupid things that the Democrats and big media will use to tar all Republicans, and therefore paint the entire right side of the GOP with the same brush.

That’s why the Sarah Palin-Nikki Haley alliance against the Jake Knotts-Andre Bauer crowd in South Carolina had the GOP elitist/centerist types flummoxed on how to respond, because in their minds there’s not supposed to be any difference between the Palin-Haley and the Knotts-Bauer conservative Republicans, and it annoyed the hell out of them to end up having to follow Palin’s lead in the governor’s race.

Don’t we see that a lot in comments here at HA? The drumbeat calling for Conservatives to ignore their concerns and accept that the interests of the moderates/independents are more important? Social conservatives are regularly told they’re the destruction of the party and how people like Palin and the Tea Oarty candidates are stupid – as are the people who support them.

The RINO Senators opposition to conservatives gaining a stronger base in the Senate has everything to do with RINOs losing party positions and power in a conservative GOP Senate.

RINOs are about being in the nexus of power so they can feel it tingle up their legs. Outside of an occasional conservative campaign obsfucation, little for the RINOs is about conservative principles.

If the RINOs lose their party majority, their ability to appoint committee positions and chairs will be gone. RINOs will become increasing irrelevant with little opportunity to pass out the moderate pork that funds their re-election.

Y’know, I have to agree with the centrists: I don’t think the ‘big tent GOP’ is a good idea, and I never believed it was very smart. Why? Because it lets RINOs like McCain in. And Snowe. Lindsey Graham. Scott Brown. For a while, I believed we should go 3rd party, and leave both the Republicans and democrats behind, forming a hard-core Conservative party. Now, after listening to Mark Levin and Sean Hannity, I think the way to go is to remove RINOs and other destructive weaklings from the GOP, replacing them with hard-core Conservatives, transforming the GOP into the Conservative Party. In recent years, I have become indescribably disgusted with RINOs, despising them even more than democrats. We need to politically kill off the centrists/RINOs, and replace them with the Sharon Angles, the LTC Wests, the Governor Christies, the Hayworths. This new crop of hard-talking, plain-speaking, actions-speaking-louder-than-words, Constitutional Originalist Republicans are the key to saving the United States, and the GOP. Not weak, squishy, go-along-to-get-along centrist RINOs. You want to be a RINO, go where you belong: the DNC. Obama talking about ‘kicking ass’ looks like Steve Urkel threatening someone. If he wants to see what ass-kicking looks like, all he’s got to do is look at Chris Christie, and read the record/story of Lieutenant Colonel West, United States Army. He’ll never be able to do what they’re doing, but at least he’ll know what it is he’s blathering about, and once he realizes he’s literally talking about jumping over the moon, maybe he’ll stop such stupid-talk.

Virus-X: that’s exactly the kind of reasoning these “centrists” provoke. I don’t quite understand why they’re endangering their own careers like this but, well, they are. They apparently don’t fear conservatives enough. That has to change, imo.